


I Love You to the Dryer and Back

by teacupsofcoffee



Category: Yuri!!! on Ice (Anime)
Genre: Domestic Fluff, Laundry, M/M, Shark Boxers, Viktor with a k because we're not barbarians, the St. Petersburg apartment, золотце - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-28
Updated: 2019-08-28
Packaged: 2020-09-28 16:06:43
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,930
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20428685
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/teacupsofcoffee/pseuds/teacupsofcoffee
Summary: It's laundry day and Yuuri is left alone in the St. Petersburg apartment.





	I Love You to the Dryer and Back

**Author's Note:**

  * For [EloquentlySavage](https://archiveofourown.org/users/EloquentlySavage/gifts).

> My very own Viktor-with-a-k dared me to write it and then dared me to post it; I ain't no coward.

The apartment in St. Petersburg was perfect for two—two pairs of shoes at the door, two toothbrushes under the mirror, two mugs in the sink, two pillows on the bed, and so on. Yuuri had almost grown used to seeing double, but sometimes on an afternoon unusually quiet, the miracle of it all would catch him off guard with as much intensity as it had the first time. 

Today was such an afternoon, the living room still and quiet. Only an occasional shift in Yuuri’s reading position disturbed the silence. When he turned a page in the Russian magazine he was trying to decipher, it seemed as loud as crumpling wrapping paper the day after Christmas. The apartment was _too_ quiet, even knowing that Viktor was gone, which began to fill him with a sense of unease.

Despite having moved in several months ago the space was only just beginning to look lived-in, mostly thanks to those who had welcomed him to Russia—a lucky cat figurine from Yurio, presumably to make Yuuri feel more at home, an aloe vera plant from Mila, piles of training regimens from Coach Yakov. But nothing friendly in the room could begin to fill the silence Viktor left in his absence. 

Yuuri realized then that the dryer had stopped. 

He groaned and threw his head back on the arm of the coach, blinking away the prickling of tears in his eyes. No wonder it was so quiet. He felt like an idiot now, getting emotional over it. His mind always wandered to the worst thoughts when left to its own devices. You’d think he’d learn to put on some music or white noise like he did at competitions. 

Yuuri went through the motions of pulling warm laundry into the basket, carrying it to the bedroom, and dumping the pile onto the bed. Now the chore would have to be confronted before bedtime, but for the time being it felt as insurmountable as Hasetsu Castle. 

Ah. Hasetsu. His family, the onsen, the Ice Castle, the bridge by the river, Minako’s bar. It rarely occurred to him to be homesick, but once Yuuri boarded a negative train of thought, it was like he had to drive the whole thing off the rails. He faceplanted onto the bed, laying there like a dead fish against the warm laundry. 

That’s when it happened. Rather than careening off the tracks, his train of thought screeched to a halt at the station The realization was simply this: the laundry, in which his face happened to be buried, had no scent. 

Sure, it smelled clean, maybe even carried a whiff of whatever the detergent was supposed to be—fresh air? Ocean breeze? Whatever. It was Viktor’s detergent, and Yuuri couldn’t remember when Viktor’s clothes stopped smelling like him. 

This could not be underestimated as a crisis. It wasn’t so long ago when a fleeting embrace could hang on Yuuri’s skin for hours afterward. If Viktor so much as tossed him his jacket in practice, Yuuri was left almost intoxicated. Now both his and Viktor’s clothes carried the same scent, rendering it nonexistent and devoid of comfort. 

The apartment door unlocked. Yuuri scrambled off the bed, almost throwing the shirt he had been sniffing. Not that Viktor hadn’t caught him doing stranger things, but as a general principle he tried not to add to the list of those incidents. 

Laughter spilled into the living room as Viktor and Makkachin competed for the entryway. The air inside the apartment stirred to life as if Yuuri’s fiancé were an autumn breeze lifting leaves from the pavement. 

“We’re back!” Viktor called. 

“Welcome home,” Yuuri called back, leaning out the bedroom door. He was still calming his heartrate. 

Viktor hung up his coat. “Can you believe this boy? He’s more excited to come home than to go for a walk.” He reached down to scratch behind Makkachin’s ear. “Maybe we should put you on our exercise routine, hm? Would you go jogging in the dark every morning if Coach Yakov barked at you too?” 

He looked up at Yuuri and smiled. “Hello, love. Miss me?”

Every feeling rose to Yuuri’s throat at once. How much time did he spend with Viktor every day now, both on and off the ice? Who did he fall asleep facing, who was the first thing he saw in the morning? How could Viktor come back from a walk that couldn’t have taken more than half an hour, and still make him feel like this every damn time?

“A little,” Yuuri answered, more honestly than he meant to be. 

Viktor was already there, his arms wrapping around Yuuri’s waist. A whiff of heady cologne and the streets of St. Petersburg came with him. The city always smelled like the day after a storm, no matter the weather. 

“Just a little?” he asked. Viktor’s face was still cold when he nuzzled Yuuri’s neck with a contented hum, sending goosebumps down his arms. 

“Do you want to do the socks?” Yuuri blurted. 

Viktor’s lips traced the curve of his neck. “If I say yes, what will you do for me?” 

Yuuri drew in a breath. He resisted the urge to tilt his head to encourage the touch, twisting around instead. One hand slid across Viktor’s back, the other caressed the side of his face, where his was still pink with cold. He gazed into Viktor’s eyes and channeled katsudon with his whole being.

“The rest of the laundry,” he whispered. 

Viktor burst into laughter and buried his face in Yuuri’s shoulder, shaking with the effort to contain himself. Yuuri bit back his own smile and pretended to console him by petting his hair.

“There, there,” he said, without a trace of penitence. 

Viktor recovered what remained of his dignity and pressed a kiss to Yuuri’s head. “You win, _zolotse_,” Yuuri could still feel the smile in his kiss and voice. “Socks and underwear.” 

Yuuri still did not know the meaning of _zolotse_, even after repeating it in butchered Russian to Yurio at the end of a practice. The boy had made violent gagging noises and skated to the opposite end of the rink in total disgust. Gauging solely by that reaction, the pet name still could mean anything from _light of my eyes_ to _my filthy Japanese sex pig_.

Viktor sat on the bed with his legs crossed beneath him, looking about as elegant as a boy in kindergarten. His bangs fell over his eyes, a little disheveled from the wind and Yuuri’s hands, and he paired socks with the same heightened focus he gave every other undertaking in his life. He looked almost nothing like the world’s Viktor Nikiforov, the skating legend with an affinity for Chanel lip balm and enough medals to cover the wall above their headboard. Rather, the wall was covered in photos of them together, and Viktor was just Viktor. 

Yuri finally finished the shirt he had been trying to fold since his fiancé walked through the door. He rather liked doing laundry with him there in the room. Viktor had a presence that could fill an ice rink or a party with charismatic ease, but at home his presence was softer. When it was just the two of them, nothing held back, Viktor did not feel larger than life, but simply present with his entire being and unreservedly himself.

An unexpected bonus that came with unreservedly-himself Viktor is that he did not have the vendetta against socks that Yuuri had. All their socks looked almost exactly alike, with just enough difference to be noticeably mismatched if one so much as blinked when pairing them together. Each one had to be examined by its length and patterning and varying shades of white and gray and black with the same care that might be required to determine the authenticity of an art masterpiece. Thank God they could at least tell apart their underwear—Viktor’s boxers exclusively featured sharks, “to promote shark positivity” as he put it. Unfortunately, only Yuuri was in a position to appreciate his sense of activism. 

Yuuri broke free from his drifting thoughts and glanced up to find Viktor staring at a single sock with a pinched expression, as if he were making sense of something vaguely painful. 

“Are you okay?” Yuuri asked. 

He blinked out of the distant expression. “Yes,” he said simply. Viktor huffed a little laugh as if in disbelief, looking down at the unmatched sock again. The rest were already balled into pairs. “It’s just so peaceful, and I had always imagined myself alone.”

Yuuri’s heart wanted to pull out of his chest and fly to where it belonged. “You?” 

“Me.”

This was the Viktor Nikiforov with a skating career that made history, with fans across the world, with an apartment too big for one and empty bedroom walls. Viktor Nikiforov, who once cut his hair short and never told the press why. Viktor, his Vitya, who could not keep his clothes on when he drank but had never once removed his ring, who always kissed Yuuri goodnight, who called him sweet names in a language Yuuri only understood when the words were pressed to his skin. Sometimes Yuuri was reminded that Viktor had once known just as much loneliness as he had, perhaps even more. 

The laundry was forgotten. Yuuri toppled them both over in bed, Viktor landing in the pillows with an exasperated noise. He would have made a comment about Yuuri’s weight if a hand hadn’t covered his mouth.

“Don’t,” Yuuri said.

Viktor kissed his palm, then his wrist, then hugged Yuuri’s hand to his chest. Their fingers laced together. “I wasn’t sad,” he said. “How could I be? I didn’t even know who I was missing.”

“Hn.” 

They lay together awhile, their thoughts gradually slowing to match the breaths between them. Yuuri brushed the hair from Viktor’s eyes to see him better, wishing he could know for certain whether he was hurting anywhere that could be reached. Every so often he would catch a moment when Viktor drew into himself as if he had stumbled on an old doubt. Yuuri never knew how to bring him back from that. It meant waiting for Viktor to come back on his own, for his eyes to see him again, for him to be present in the room once more. 

So Yuuri tried to distract him instead. “Sometimes you find just one sock at the end of the laundry, you know? And you think, what happened to the other one? Did the dryer eat it? Will I ever find it? What am I going to do with this stupid, single sock?”

Viktor gave him the same look he had given when Yuuri characterized Eros as a favorite food, an expression that seemed both charmed and utterly confused. 

Confusion worked too. Yuuri kept going. “But we’re not like that. Neither of us will ever disappear in the dryer.”

“Because we’re not socks,” Viktor supplied, matching Yuuri’s very serious, no-nonsense tone.

Yuuri wriggled closer. “No, we’re absolutely socks. But we’re a matching set now. We’ll always be folded together, okay?”

His fiancé smiled, the crescents of his eyes truly happy. “Okay,” he whispered. “Thank you.”

Yuuri could feel the thank you pressed over his heart like a chaste kiss. 

And that is where all chasteness ended. Viktor rolled over him and nibbled his ear. Yuuri smothered a noise that he would later have to insist was not a squeak. 

“Thank you,” Viktor repeated. Their waists pressed together. “But no more laundry talk.”


End file.
